


more time

by anotherbuskitten



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: F/M, Groundhog Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2019-01-06 22:14:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12220017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotherbuskitten/pseuds/anotherbuskitten
Summary: Alexander dies. Alexander wakes up.





	more time

**Author's Note:**

> my internet's down and this is pretty much all I've managed to write which might be the most annoying thing about the whole situation. also I hate this but I want to post something damnit.

I aim my pistol at the sky. I think of Eliza. I close my eyes. Burr won’t kill –

– WAIT!

I’ve been shot before, the pain of it stifling some part of me, knowing I have done enough. I have always been ready to die. I have never been prepared to die.

How has this happened? How can I have fought in a war, lived through a war, been a soldier who had done his part, served his time, only to become a husband and father and not have done enough?

I’m in a boat, on a river, in the greatest city in the world. I have just been shot.

I have just been shot.

I try to speak, to get something out that might make this worth it. I see Eliza, I see my wife, I cannot think of the words.

I was never enough.

 

I wake up.

My heart pounds and my mind shakes. My mouth is dry like the desert. My skin is hot like the desert.

I stand up. I go to my desk. There is no letter there best of wives I sit down.

It is dark, the sun barely beginning to rise but I have to write this letter, I have to leave soon.

I dreamt my own death but it was only a dream – how foolish my mind, to think that Aaron Burr could shoot me. Still I have to write the letter.

Still, I’ll be back before she wakes.

I aim my pistol at the sky. I think of Eliza. I close my eyes. Burr won’t kill –

– WAIT!

I’ve been shot before, the pain of it stifling some part of me, knowing I have done enough. I have always been ready to die. I have never been prepared to die.

How has this happened? How can I have fought in a war, lived through a war, been a soldier who had done his part, served his time, only to become a husband and father and not have done enough?

I’m in a boat, on a river, in the greatest city in the world. I have just been shot.

I have just been shot.

I try to speak, to get something out that might make this worth it. I see Eliza, I see my wife, I cannot think of the words.

I was never enough.

 

I wake up.

My heart pounds and my mind shakes. My mouth is dry like the desert. My skin is hot like the desert.

I stand up. I go to my desk. There is no letter there _best of wives_ I sit down.

It is dark, the sun barely beginning to rise but I have to write this letter, I have to leave soon.

I have seen my death twice now, and still I am given the chance to live again and if I must shoot

Burr is my friend, or was, or maybe he truly hates me but still I will not kill him.

Perhaps it is this gun that curses me to death. I leave it with the letter.

I stand, hands free of any weapon, heart twitching in my throat. I think of Eliza. I leave my eyes open, glasses off. He looks blurrily confused, holding his gun straight and steady, finger on the trigger but his eyes find mine and even half-blind I know. Burr won’t kill –

– WAIT!

The gun goes off as it falls from his hands. The bullet hits lower than before and I can see death again, some starlit world without me in it.

How is it, again, I am still not prepared to die?

I reach for Burr blindly. I am not on the boat yet, there is still time, I can fix this. I must tell Burr not to bring a gun to our duel. I will take back my words.

There is still time.

_Eliza._

 

I wake up.

_Eliza_

_My love_

I am hot like the desert again, still only a scared boy. There is nothing of me left. This morning I must go to a duel and speak to Aaron Burr. This morning I must not die.

I brush her hair back to see her face relaxed again. It feels as though many years have gone by since I last saw her smile.

She will smile when I get home.

She will smile at me.

I leave early. I go straight to Burr’s home.

I am hit by a carriage. I have never been less prepared to die.

 

I wake up.

I am tired of this ache in my skin, this blinding heat beneath my eyelids. I am tired of being ready to die and then of waking up.

If I must die, then surely, I must die.

But, if I am given this chance again, and again, and again, then surely I must take it.

I must give up hoping that Burr will change his mind. He is clearly set on my death so I must, clearly, kill him first.

My heart is in my throat. I sweat like death again.

Burr – my first friend

My enemy?

Surely not. And yet…

And yet he has killed me every time, whether deliberate or not the ending is the same.

I do not leave a note for Eliza. This time I _will_ be coming home.

 

2

 

I wake up. The bed is still warm. Alexander must have only just left. Perhaps this time I will reach him before Burr’s bullet does.

I am certain that he does not know that I am forced to relive his death every night or else he would change the way it happens. And yet it changes each time – not much, not noticeably but enough that I know each day is different.

I am not just dreaming the same nightmare of my husband’s death each night.

This is some trickery, some magic, though Alexander would scoff; there’s something not human at work here.

My husband has often spoken, though rarely direct to me, of the sickness he lived through, of the hurricane he lived through, finally of the war he lived through.

Three things he felt he should have died in. Three reasons he had to fight for his legacy as hard as possible.

I had these dreams of his death during the war. Perhaps I am just to be haunted by him forever.

This morning, as every other morning, I reach the boat as it crosses the river, Alexander bleeding out inside.

This morning Burr bleeds out beside him.

Oh, Alexander, _no_.

 

 

I wake up. I am safe; in bed beside Eliza. Yesterday I shot and killed Aaron Burr. Today I am prepared to live with that.

I reach over to Eliza, taking care to move slowly and not aggravate my wound, if I wake her now she will not understand my urgency to live but Eliza has always urged me to live in the now. She’ll be happy –

My wound.

Yesterday I was shot.

Today I am uninjured.

I take stock. I feel sick. My heart races. My skin burns.

I have a duel this morning.

I make it outside before I am sick.

Must I do this twice? How many times must I die? Will I be asked to kill Burr a second time?

No. No I cannot. I cannot do it a second time.

But _Eliza_ …

How many times must I be asked to leave her?

Wait.

Wait.

WAIT!

I wake up head against the cold stone my Eliza is by my side.

_“Alexander, come back to bed.”_

… “ _I have a meeting out of town_.”

“ _Come back to bed_.”

“ _I have to_ …

Why is Eliza awake so early?

Why are we outside in our bedclothes this early in the morning? The sun hasn’t even risen.

“ _Alexander go back to bed_. I’ll find Mr. Burr. I’ll tell him the duel’s off.”

Have I written the letter already? How?

My mind is afire.

I look up into my Betsy’s eyes.

Oh,

Oh _no._

Surely no one would be so cruel. How many times have I died thus far? Five? Six?

How many more tragedies have I forced upon her?


End file.
